Mad Men’s drama is in its subtlety—the inscrutable looks and pauses, the characters’ mysterious inner lives—and also its occasional outrageousness, like the time that the lawn mower ran amok, smashing glass and causing injuries, or the unhinged lady who got into Don and Megan’s apartment, or Ginsberg’s severed nipple. There is also drama and messaging in what the characters wear.
We have seen Janie Bryant’s designs segue from the stodgy and constricting early 1960s to the free-flowing, color-injected hippie era—from browns to swirls. Hair has gone from tight and bunched-up to big, sleek, and bouffant. Mousy jumpers have given way to power suits. Don Draper has remained a suave constant, but even he has experimented with plaid. And now, its final style hurrah is here as the stretch of episodes begins to air on Sunday night. We can already see kipper ties, sideburns. The 1970s seem to be here. The sight of Don Draper in flares? Surely then we’ll know it’s all over.
Betty Draper (January Jones), season one: just a regular 1960 suburban housewife. Not. Evacuate the store, especially impressionable pre-teens.
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Eternal, unbreakable fashion rule: There is only one way to wear a suit. It is called The Don Draper Way.
Carin Baer / AMC
Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), in season one: the Queen Bee of the Secretary Pool, the Madonna of the Staple Gun.
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Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss)—a symphony of sludgy brown and shapelessness—hitting every wrong style note, proudly, in season one.
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Don Draper (Jon Hamm) Goes Casual. A lesson to us all.
Sigh.
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In season two, Peggy escaped the shackles of clinging wool and discovered glamor + lipstick.
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The forever-glacial Betty: find the woman a cigarette, or shotgun.
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Betty, brilliantly working the intersection of pretty summer dress and femme fatale.
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The man, the beard, that cardigan: we love you Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis).
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It’s beatnik-a-gogo from season four: Joyce Ramsey, played by Girls’ Zosia Mamet, and Peggy, feel the Beat in plastic overcoat and countercultural yellow jumper.
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Men’s Mad Men fashion is not all about Don, and it’s not all about charcoal greys: Don Draper, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), and Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) caper about in plaid and colors in season five.
Michael Yarish
'Fat Betty’ at her most WTF in season five.
Michael Yarish
More plaid and sixties Paisley swirls as Pete and Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie) socialize in season five. Groovy, kids!
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Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) and brother Bobby (Mason Vale Cotton) in their usual "the adult world is around us is screwed, how an we effectively avoid their damage damaging us?" pose on the couch.
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By season six, Joan wasn’t just sirening around the office in purples and reds. The 60s was getting to her—here with headscarf.
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Peggy discovers the power-suit: a million miles from the sludgy browns of the early years of the show.
Jaimie Trueblood
Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman): the angsty and ultimately dangerously loopy ad-man at his most adorably put together. Before the, er, severed nipple.
Michael Yarish
Freed from boxy suits and fitted dresses, the no longer 'Fat' Betty goes country-casual in season six.
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The impeccably impeccable silver fox, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) meets hippie culture in season six in Los Angeles, with Danny Siegal (Danny Strong) and Lotus (Evan Lorene).
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Outside of Manhattan lies color! Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) working mellow yellow, as the ad-folk hit LA in season six.
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Dawn (Teyonah Parris) and Idara Victor (Nikki): black characters enter the story in season six.
Jordin Althaus/AMC
Floppy hats and richly colored swimming trunks: Megan (Jessica Paré) and Don in season six.
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A fedora can squash many a man’s head. But not, obviously, Don’s—in season seven.
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He's got the beads if you've got the time. The office goes to hell-in-a-hot-hippie-handcart, thanks to the likes of Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson).
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Dawn, the world’s best secretary, shows how to wear a boxy jacket.
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More L.A. shenanigans in season seven. NY suits jettisoned, blonde, sun-kissed casual in: Pete Campbell, with disappearing hairline, and Bonnie Whiteside (Jessy Schram).
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Roger Sterling remains reassuringly sharp in this gorgeous suit.
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Oh, what fun it must be to one of Betty’s children, picnicking with mom in one of her drop-dead day-suits, and watching her as she—ignoring the sandwiches and bucolic surroundings—snarls at you and at the world with her nicotined weapon of choice.
The power of big hair, as exemplified by Megan.
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Bold patterns are not the only choice for the late sixties starlet. Megan’s baby-doll-nightie-influenced dress hits the party circuit.
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